


As the dust settles

by WatermelonTuesdays



Series: Finding Family [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, First Relationship, Getting Together, Internal Monologue, Minor Kolivan/Krolia (Voltron), Our baby's getting so grown up!, Post-Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 16:11:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16957230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatermelonTuesdays/pseuds/WatermelonTuesdays
Summary: Following Keith's lengthy stay in the hospital after the events of season 7, Keith does some ruminating on family and what that means to him. He also finds his thoughts occupied by one pretty blue lady.------Family dynamics are still new to Keith.Except for the paladins, and his short time with Shiro and Adam, Keith had never had even the semblance of a family. Not since his father, and even then, they had felt the absence of Keith’s mother too keenly to be a true family.So waking up in his hospital bed to find his mother and Kolivan at his side was surreal. Kolivan’s authority and strong command had immediately established him as a father figure for Keith, and if Keith was reading things correctly between Kolivan and his mother it seemed that he would one day be more like an actual father.





	As the dust settles

**Author's Note:**

> Ugh, putting that F/M category at the beginning hurt my soul a little bit!
> 
> Please be kind and bear with me, I SWEAR Sheith is coming!

It doesn’t take long to find a sense of order and routine on Earth. As soon as they’re recovered (which takes significantly longer without the castle’s healing pods), the other paladins get straight to work helping with the re-build of the entire planet. Keith is left behind, first from his extra 2 week stay in the hospital, and then from his lengthy rehabilitation and physical therapy regime; but he has a holopad and a teleporting wolf, so he quickly finds a way to lead Voltron from his hospital room, and later from his small garrison-appointed office.

After the initial flock of alien life to Earth (what they initially called the Voltron Homeworld, which Shiro and Allura had to nicely but firmly rename the Paladin Homeworld), immigration has slowed down. Trade has taken off.

It turns out there are several dozen planets in the milky way alone that house intelligent, star-traversing life, and they have quickly added Earth to their trade routes. They bring with them new metals, foods, and technologies. And best of all, they bring crystals and other, stranger, forms of fuel. 

The Holt family is beside itself with glee, and spend a great deal of their time bickering whether they should be focusing on defence, travel, or recreating the healing pods. 

After several days of the same arguments, Keith finally steps in on one early-morning family debate and assigns Holt to defence, Pidge to new tech, and Matt to the healing pods. 

They look suitably sheepish at the necessity for intervention. It’s enough to keep Keith from grumbling at them for being ridiculous. 

The argument starts up anew once Keith leaves the room; he hears Pidge’s voice echoing down the hall after him, “No, Matt, Keith said you’re on healing pods, so stay away from my designs…”

He shakes his head as he walks away. Belatedly, he realizes their argument was more family bonding than anything else. It made sense in retrospect that the family of geniuses would communicate through inventions and programming. He should have recognized it, and maybe he shouldn’t have interfered. 

Family dynamics are still new to Keith. 

Except for the paladins, and his short time with Shiro and Adam, Keith had never had even the semblance of a family. Not since his father, and even then, they had felt the absence of Keith’s mother too keenly to be a true family. 

So waking up in his hospital bed to find his mother and Kolivan at his side was surreal. Kolivan’s authority and strong command had immediately established him as a father figure for Keith, and if Keith was reading things correctly between Kolivan and his mother it seemed that he would one day be more like an actual father. 

Having a family unit, even one as hobbled together as this, was much different from the one-on-one experiences he had had previously. Keith had struggled and grown under Kolivan’s tight command. He had matured and settled under Krolia’s watch and care. Individually they had shaped him over the last 3 years (6 years to the rest of the universe) into the man he was now; together, they were a new and fledgling family that was still trying to get their bearings with each other. 

They were doing well, all things considered. None of them were emotionally vocal, but a clear chain of command from Kolivan, to Krolia, to Keith helped ease them into familial rhythms. They were getting the hang of it, creating their own family dynamic and ways of communication. 

It was nothing like the Holts’; they had years of practice – their dynamic was ingrained. Very likely, their never-ending debate was as natural to them as breathing. Keith’s family was not there yet. But they were starting, and that was enough.

Baby steps.

Patience yields… family?

Keith smiles to himself as he walks.

That seemed true enough, in his experience. After he lost his father, Keith had had no one at all. Then Shiro had found him and taken him in, and eventually Adam had accepted him as well. Then the paladins had built a family around him out of need. It was no less a family because it was forged in danger and desperation. Then the Blades had accepted him and pulled him into their ranks, leading him to his actual blood-relative mother. The one person in all the universe that Keith was tied to from more than just circumstance and mutual respect. 

It had not been an easy journey. And Keith would fight tooth and nail to preserve what he had found. He had several families now, each a little bit different, but none more important than the rest. 

Keith is still lost in his own thoughts when he reaches his destination: the garrison training room. His injuries had been the most severe and he is still not cleared for duty. He’ll tell anyone who’ll listen that he feels fine, feels ready to get back into action and help re-build his home planet, but that doesn’t mean a thing until the doctors have given him a clean bill of health.

So, naturally, he spends a lot of his time these days in the training room working on his recovery. He’s careful not to overwork himself; initially he was not so careful and he ended up sending himself back to bedrest for a full week, so he learned that lesson fairly quick.

Acxa is waiting for him with an exercise ball at her feet and a tension cord around her shoulders. 

While everyone else is busy with the re-build and diplomatic meetings, Acxa has taken on Keith’s recovery as her special project. 

Acxa’s arrival seems to have completed their mismatched Galra family unit. She fits in well with the others despite the fact she’s really only just met them. And she has been kind, patient, and helpful with Keith’s recovery. 

But her presence has unsettled something in Keith that he can’t understand. He doesn’t know what she wants from him, and the ease with which she’s entered his family unit further confuses him. What is she to him?

Just because he had ignored Ezor’s taunts when Acxa helped them escape doesn’t mean he hadn’t heard them. Ezor had said Acxa liked him. Keith would like to say that she was just spouting nonsense to try and throw them off guard, but he sees the way Acxa brightens softly when he enters the training room. 

His stomach flips at her smile, but he doesn’t know why. Is he happy she likes him? Is he guilty that he can’t reciprocate those feelings? Or is he nervous because he does reciprocate them? He’s never been in this situation before and he doesn’t know what to do. 

So, he does what Keith does best: he ignores it. 

Feelings have no place on the battle field, and despite their current illusion of peace and prosperity Keith knows that every corner of the universe is a potential battle field until the Galra empire is eliminated for good. 

The problem with these kinds of dilemmas is that they really don’t go away just because you ignore them. 

No matter how much he dismisses the issue, Acxa’s eyes still light with the same soft feelings when he steps into a room. 

He wants to talk to someone about it, but every time he tries he loses his nerves. He’s not sure he can even put his confusion into words. How do you explain something you don’t understand yourself? Do you just list your physical symptoms?

Keith tries to bring the subject up with his mother, but his concerns are lost to Krolia’s praise of the physical therapy regime Acxa cooked up for him. He tries to speak with Kolivan, but all he sees is a promising new recruit for the now dying Blade of Marmora. He tries to speak to Shiro, but the words die in his throat and choke his breath. 

So Keith wrestles with the issue on his own. He pivots between asking her out and getting it over with, and ignoring it forever until she gives up.

But then one night in mess hall, Keith walks to the table where Krolia, Kolivan, and Acxa wait for him. The thought strikes him between one step and the next, and it nearly bowls him over when it does. It’s simple, but all the more potent for it’s simplicity: Keith thinks quite clearly that this is his family. It’s not a new thought, but the clarity and force it lands with settles deep in Keith’s chest. 

This is his family. And Keith owes it to himself to try.

So that night, Keith pulls Acxa aside and he takes her up to the roof where they can look up at the stars or out at the expanse of desert. 

He fumbles his words as he tries to explain himself. Tries to put into words that he doesn’t know what he’s feeling, but he thinks she’s part of his home, and maybe they could see where that leads. 

Acxa’s smile is soft and understanding at first, and then glowing and brilliant when Keith reaches out a tentative hand to hold hers. She touches his face with her other hand and tells him it’s ok not to know sometimes. Says she understands, and knows that he’s been fighting a war for so long, one she’s been on either side of, and that romance is not something that comes easy to either of them.

“But, maybe, we can be just this for each other for now. And see where it goes,” she says softly, thumbing over his cheek when he presses a hand to hers. 

Their lips meet under the dancing light of the stars, and Keith might not know romance but he thinks vaguely that this might be it. So they hold hands as Acxa walks him to his room, and the next day he announces to his Galra and his paladin families that he and Acxa are an item. And then, easy as anything, Acxa slips flawlessly into the seams of his life, filling in the edges and empty spaces.

**Author's Note:**

> Just 3 more sleeps guys!
> 
> I'm not going to lie, this fic and Thursday's update are I think the hardest fics I've had to write yet. I wanted to write them because season 7 put a heavy fear of a canon Acxa/Keith pairing into me and I had to deal with it somehow. Like... I get how they would work, and I can see it, and I don't mind it, but I had to write this in order to properly accept it. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone but me though, ha ha!
> 
> Thanks for reading this!
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr as WatermelonTuesdays and on Twitter as WTuesdays.


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